Questionable quotes
[Home] [Investigations, more] [Articles] [Questionable quotes]

The quote:

Shortly before his untimely death, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that "Al Qaeda" is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=3836

The original:

Robin Cook wasn’t known for denying Al Qaeda is a terrorist group, and searching at Hansard (a record of everything that goes on in Parliament) produced no matches even remotely matching the above claim. The best match we found was this, from a Guardian article:

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.

The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that original error. So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1523838,00.html

No suggestion whatsoever that “al Qaeda is not a terrorist group”, quite the opposite.The representation give appears to be entirely false.

The quote:

Some observers said they thought it had the markings of American Airlines but some said it was a small aircraft, others a missile or jetfighter. "It was like a cruise missile with wings, went right there and slammed into the Pentagon," Mike Walter, an eyewitness, told CNN.—CNN.COM, "Up to 800 possibly dead at Pentagon", September 12, 2001
http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/Missile-Not-Flight-77.html

The original:

This sometimes gets used to support the “missile hit the Pentagon” theories, but unfortunately there’s an important bit of the quote they’re leaving out:

"I was sitting in the northbound on 27 and the traffic was, you know, typical rush-hour -- it had ground to a standstill. I looked out my window and I saw this plane, this jet, an American Airlines jet, coming. And I thought, 'This doesn't add up, it's really low.'

"And I saw it. I mean it was like a cruise missile with wings. It went right there and slammed right into the Pentagon.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/trends/09/11/witnesses/

It seems he was saying the way the plane flew straight into the building, not describing how it looked.

[Home] [Hijackers] [Foreknowledge] [Stand down] [WTC (demolition)] [WTC (other)] [WTC7 and Silverstein] [Pentagon] [Flight 93] [bin Ladin] [Obstructing Justice] [Afghanistan] [Others] [Investigations, more] [What's New?]